Content Isn’t Always King!
Raise your hands if you would like to get more targeted traffic to your website.
I am no wizard, but I assume both your hands (and your feet) are up.
Creating content is the best way to establish yourself as an industry leader and attract new customers. After all, content is king, and the secret ingredient of a killer blog post. It’s also a known fact that content has an amazing potential of connecting your business with your target audience.
I’m sure you agree with that. But pay attention to one essential word I used: potential. This word conveys a deeper meaning that maybe something might be missing. While great content is surely necessary, it is not enough if you want to reach the highest levels of success.
If you are serious about standing out from the 2 million articles and blog posts published every day, you need to start building trust. Without trust, your king might just as well end up reigning an empty kingdom.
If there is anything I learned from creating content is that it should influence your prospective customers into trusting you. Trust gives you the means to relate to them and makes your brand feel familiar. Trust together with content has the power to bring in conversions and client loyalty.
A New Perspective
Creating content is a lot like nursing: it’s all about helping, providing value, and building trust. It’s this mix of features that will make your content irresistible. You need to establish yourself as a trusted expert in your field and a caring provider if you want to turn your content into a lead-generating powerhouse.
But, how can you create trust through content?
Barbara Fredrickson, the creator of the broaden-and-build theory, believes that positive emotions help people connect. When they read positive content, they start to think “we” instead of “me,” and they are more open to the probability of engaging with others.
When people start to see themselves as part of a community, they are more likely to engage with its members. By harnessing the power of positive emotions, you can build trust with your audience through content.
Pull, Don’t Push.
You need to provide value that „pulls” clients towards your brand. Prospective customers need to feel that they are given value and not empty, sales-y content that they do not want.
If you push content toward your audience instead of pulling them to it, you risk building mistrust. Just remember this simple rule: when it comes to content, less is always more. In other words, focus on the quality of your content, and not the quantity.
Connect and Nurture
Do you know what the most important element that can break or make content is?
You guessed it! It’s connections.
Over the years, I’ve worked with many brands that were focused on creating great content. However, they weren’t able to get the results they were hoping for. Do you know why? It’s because they were using it improperly.
Thinking of your prospective clients as avid content consumers, eager to listen to what you say is simply misleading and ineffective. It puts you in a place of superiority which can only distance you from what you ultimately aim to achieve: connecting with your audience and building your social reach.
It is therefore mostly a matter of constantly making sure you connect with your targeted audience, to their needs, and their perspectives.
Remember, building a relationship and consolidating trust can only come if you connect and engage your prospective customers properly — and not the other way around.
